Jockey wheels provide a swivelling wheel arrangement disposed at a front end region of a trailer to assist in pushing or moving the trailer small distances in various directions when the trailer is not attached to a towing vehicle such as a car or prime mover. In known designs a ground engaging wheel is swivel mounted to a base of a wheel post with a trailing arm to facilitate swiveling about a yaw axis. Jockey wheels also may assist with coupling a trailer coupling to a trailer hitch by facilitating alignment of a trailer end of a coupling with a cooperating vehicle end of a coupling by raising and lowering the front end of the trailer.
Once the trailer is coupled to a towing vehicle, the towing vehicle can support and haul the trailer itself, and at that time the jockey wheel is stowed.
To deploy one known jockey wheel design, a cylindrical support post of a jockey wheel is mounted in a saddle bracket against a trailer frame element. To stow that known jockey wheel, the bolts fastening the saddle bracket are opened, the cylindrical support post and jockey wheel are removed from the saddle bracket and the jockey wheel is then stowed in a nearby, conveniently-sized box or trunk.
Other known jockey wheel designs include pivoting jockey wheel mounting brackets so that the jockey wheel remains substantially permanently mounted or bolted to the trailer frame element but can pivot so that the jockey wheel can be pivoted between stowed and deployed positions.
Known jockey wheel designs are generally flimsy and poorly suited to heavy duty and/or off road applications.
The present invention seeks to provide a new jockey wheel.